


Thirty Years On

by SegaBarrett



Category: Chess - Rice/Ulvaeus/Andersson
Genre: Future Fic, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-26
Updated: 2021-01-26
Packaged: 2021-03-12 12:01:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29010192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SegaBarrett/pseuds/SegaBarrett
Summary: There's an anniversary in store.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 7
Collections: New Year's Resolutions 2021





	Thirty Years On

**Author's Note:**

  * For [weakinteraction](https://archiveofourown.org/users/weakinteraction/gifts).



> Disclaimer: I don't own Chess, and I make no money from this.

“I’m Victor Jennings, and I’m here to celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of the chess match that people are still talking about – yes, the one that took Merano, Italy by storm in 1984 and led to Anatoly Sergievsky defecting to the United Kingdom, along with a lot of other drama.” The news reporter laughed and tilted his head to the side. “I’m here with the man who brought most of that drama, Freddie Trumper. How are you doing today, Freddie?”

Freddie Trumper, who at fifty-seven still had the same sharp eyes and wary glare he had had at twenty-seven, perused the interviewer. 

“As well as one could hope, considering I’m having to sit here and answer the stupidest questions, asked by the likes of you.”

Victor Jennings laughed nervously and looked back over at his interviewee.

“Ah, well, Freddie is such a character, isn’t he? Well, I mean, he always was…”

“Get on with it. I have a lot of things to do, you know.”

“Well, I wanted to go back and relive that legendary match that you played against Anatoly Sergievsky, and get your thoughts on what that was like.”

“Have you ever played chess?” Freddie inquired.

“Well, no…”

“Then how am I supposed to get across to you what any of it was like? Why am I wasting my time?”

Victor Jennings let out a sigh and looked across at Freddie Trumper again.

“We talked about this, Freddie,” he said. “You were going to try to keep your temper down. Now, I haven’t played chess, but a lot of our viewers probably have. And even those who haven’t would like to hear about what happened back then. After all, there was passion and pain and intrigue…”

“Yeah, yeah, I’ve heard it all before. I was on 20/20 last week. They had better food.”

There was a rather long pause, probably while Victor got his composure together, before he asked, “So, Freddie. If you can.” He let out a breath of exasperation. “Take us back to 1984.”

***

Freddie was not interested in taking anyone back to 1984, or any other year in fact. He was interested in slamming the door on his past and forgetting all of it. However, the future hadn’t been looking terribly promising for the past thirty years, either.

There wasn’t a lot of call for an ex-champion out there in the world – people were obsessed with looming over the winners of the world, and there was no one who wanted to hear the story of a genius loser.

And so he had wandered. He’d started at New York and made his way west, hopping on a train because now he was fed up with flying; flying brought back far too many memories of Florence. 

He didn’t want to think of her, because he didn’t want to pick up the phone and call her and have to apologize to her. Apologies were not his strong point.

A lot of things were not his strong point.

“Well,” he said finally, “What did you want to know? I had been world champion for three years now, so I suppose I was looking for a challenge. And Sergievsky gave me a challenge all right!”

“When did you know that you had your work cut out for you?”

“Well, as soon as he threw the chess board on the floor in the first match!”

“Mr. Trumper, I thought that I had heard that you were the one who threw the chess board on the floor in the first match?”

“I don’t remember, and quite honest, who really cares?”

“Fair enough. Please continue.”

“I will, if you could be so kind,” Freddie spat the word, “To not interrupt me. My second – you know, Florence Vassy…” He let the name hang in the air for a moment as an image washed over him like a tidal wave.

_Florence on the plane, leaning in to peek at the chess board he’d placed on the tray table, sliding the pieces around as he tried to figure out any possible move Sergievsky might make. And then the way that she had reached down, placed her finger over the knight and slid it slowly._

_“You need to keep your head on straight, Freddie. Everyone feels like they can get you twisted. If you don’t let that happen, then you have that in the bag. And if you do, well, then it was yours to lose.”_

And she had been right. It had been his to lose, and he had lost. He had let it get away because he had seen Florence slipping away and he hadn’t wanted to be alone again. Friendship had been something he had thought that he could live without, but that hadn’t been true.

Survive, maybe, but not live.

“My second, Florence Vassy, was with me, but she had a lot of… there was a personal stake in the match with her.”

“And it wasn’t personal with you?”

Freddie’s head cocked to the side.

“It’s always personal with me.”

***

_“We’re going to beat them. We’re going to do it for your father,” Freddie promised, and Florence shook her head._

_“Don’t act like you’re doing this for me, Freddie. You want to stay on being champion. It’s the only thing that matters to you.”_

_“What else should matter besides winning, then? What else is even attainable?” Freddie flicked a pen off the hotel desk and dragged his hand over his face._

_“That’s very dramatic,” Florence said, “Are you sitting here contemplating the reality of your existence? Or are you thinking about winning this actual game?” She mimed slapping him on the back of the head._

***

“And Florence Vassy left because… of her personal concerns?” the reporter prompted.

Freddie hadn’t realized that his finger was swirling his eye, trying to push out whatever was making it sting. He must have something in his eye, he mused – it always seemed to happen when he was on TV and needed to talk to someone about something useless like this.

“She left because, I guess she fell in love with Anatoly Sergievsky.”

And she had fallen out of love, or whatever it has been, with Freddie.

Even though Freddie knew full well that he had never fallen out of love, or whatever it had been, with Florence.

“And then later you met them again? In Bangkok? You resigned the match in Merano pretty soon after that, didn’t you?”

Freddie’s lips curled into a smirk.

“There was no point in playing the game if I had no way of winning. Better not to waste my time.” He bit his lip. “Which is exactly what I’m doing right now, now that I come to think of it. I’m out of here.”

He rose from his seat and strut off, out of the front of the studio, and down to the subway without looking back.

***

“I emailed everything to you already. Yes, I sent it in a zip file. You need to click on it and then select ‘unzip’, and, well, then it will unzip it. Okay. I need to go,” Florence Vassy said before hanging up her phone, lest her boss give her one more inane request.

She sighed and began to pace. Of all the things she had needed to turn on the TV and see right now, a big old interview with Freddie Trumper, her former employer (was that what he had been) was not it.

Especially considering how nervous he had gotten when the interviewer had asked about her. He had stomped off – old habits seemed to die hard – but it hadn’t been a show this time. She could tell; she could always tell a lot of things about Freddie.

And now, rather than trying to get her big report done in time for her meeting, she was thinking about Freddie.

If he was on that show, then he was in New York. Still.

And so was she. Still. She didn’t want to be, hadn’t planned to be, had planned to go everywhere and anywhere before life got ahead of her and the fact that her father, while thankfully now very much alive, also very much had medical bills up to his ears had made her life less about exploring and more about grinding. Hence, why she was working for a spoiled millionaire who fancied himself the next Bruce Wayne but had neither the charm nor the Batcave for the gig.

Florence shut her laptop. She shouldn’t be out here thinking about her former life, thinking about Freddie and Anatoly – who had somehow found her on Instagram of all places and sent her something called a “story” of him, a bunch of pictures showing that somehow he hadn’t aged at all since 1984 – and Walter and Molokov and all of the pain and regret from that pair of matches. She had become an expert at not thinking about them at all.

Until she had seen Freddie on the TV and heard his name all over again.

“Shit,” she mumbled.

She was going to go meet him, wasn’t she?

***

Florence cursed the tiny letters on her phone and the way the wrong one always seemed to burst out from the background in the middle of sending something important.

She was writing – or at least, attempting to – to Anatoly. He had seen Freddie on TV, too – apparently a Freddie meltdown tended to travel fast on the internet. 

That still didn’t tell her, however, what she was supposed to do about all of it. 

“Talk to him,” was what Anatoly wrote. Simple and unmistakable.

Sometimes she hated how straightforward he could be.

***

Florence hadn’t asked for advice on exactly how and where to talk to Freddie, because she knew there was only one thing that would work. Even if she had Freddie’s number, she knew that he wouldn’t answer a cell phone any more than he had answered his wall phone – half the time he hadn’t even had it on the hook.

So she took the subway uptown and walked up the staircase, starting to regret this even before she made the turn. She didn’t even know if she wanted to see him – but, of course, she needed to see him.

The apartments in which Freddie Trumper was known to reside were on the corner of 2nd Avenue and 72nd Street, and she was able to slip in when a resident helpful left the door open just a second – Freddie’s likelihood to let her up if she buzzed was questionable.

At that thought, she did start to feel like a bit of a stalker, but it would have to do. Maybe it would all be worth it when they looked at each other again.

Not like she knew what she was going to say, or anything.

She walked by a young woman and called to her, “Excuse me. I was supposed to meet Frederick Trumper here for an interview. You don’t happen to know which apartment is his?”

It was a dare – one that made her, again wonder if someone was just going to call security on her and, two, would be an unfortunate question to lead her back to the already-paranoid   
Freddie, who would probably move out the moment that he realized that someone in the world actually knew that he lived here at all. But, then again, yes, it was a dare. It was all a dare.

“That crazy chess guy?” the woman answered. As she twirled her hair, Florence wondered if “teeny-bopper” might be a better phrase for her, not like she knew if they even used that term anymore. “Yeah, he’s just down the hall in 28. He barely leaves the house, though, if you’re another one coming by to try and get an interview.” She let out a little giggle. “He gave me a quote for the school paper, though. He’s all right, that guy.” And then the girl scampered along with a little skip in her step.

Florence couldn’t help but envy her. That girl, whoever she was, must have been born here, in a country that she knew. In a country that she wouldn’t be ripped away from at the age of five.

But then, just as quickly as the bitterness had come, it floated away. After all, Freddie had been born here and had lived his entire life here, and he didn’t fit anymore than she ever had. 

Maybe he fit even a little less, as if everyone was learning a line dance and, rather than just being out of step, Freddie would crash into the other dancers. 

She walked to room 28 and she knocked on the door, wondering if it was too late to turn and run (playing ding-dong-ditch on Freddie would do nothing good for his paranoia, she reminded herself to keep herself rooted to the spot instead). 

She didn’t expect the door to open, but didn’t expect him to be outside either. If he was the same old Freddie, he would be sitting on the couch listening to her knock and mumbling, “Go away,” under his breath until she got the hint and she did.

But, if he were the same old Freddie, there would be that hint of annoyance whenever she did turn to go. That hint of wistfulness.

She turned and prepared to go, even so, turned to decide to go back and do some work and just think about how Freddie might be doing in a normal-person kind of way, but then she heard the sound of footsteps on the other side of the door.

This was followed by a “hold on, already, I’m coming, I’m coming”.

And then the door opened.

Freddie Trumper stared back at her.

“Florence,” he said. 

She stood, staring behind him at the tiny apartment, where she could see a TV on and a TV table in front of it, a ratty couch off to the side.

Freddie narrowed his eyes and then he said, “Well, are you coming in or not? I’ve been waiting for you to stop by.”

Florence smiled.

Nothing had ever really changed at all, and maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing.


End file.
